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Movements in Philosophy:
Phenomenology and Its Parallels
HERBERT SPIEGELBERG
Washington University
MOVEMENTS IN PHILOSOPHY 28 3
2. Pragmatism
Pragmatism was clearly the most characteristic, if not the strongest,
philosophical movement in the United States that called itself deliber-
ately a movement, not a circle or a school. To be sure, C. S. Peirce, who
first coined the name, after emerging from the Cambridge Metaphysical
Club with its evolutionist roots, never talked about pragmatism as a
movement. He even turned away from it by "kissing his brainchild
goodbye" and setting his own philosophy apart under the deliberately
repulsive name of "pragmaticism." It was William James who took
over the banner. It is also in his writings that one can find the explicit
characterization of it as a "movement."6 But eventually even James
preferred a fresh label for his own philosophy by the name of "radical
4 The St. Louis Movement in Philosophy, Literature, Education (St. Louis: Sigma Pub-
lishingCompany,i9z0), p. 5.
5 Ibid., pp. 5-6.
6 p. 47.
Pragmatism (I907),
3. Logical Positivism
How far can neo-positivism, and particularly the logical posivitism (in
contrast to the original positivismr of Auguste Comte), of the Vienna
Circle and the so-called "Berlin School" of Hans Reichenbach be con-
sidered a philosophical movement? My impression is that "movement"
is the preferred expression used by insiders, whereas on the outside it is
more often called a "school." A good indication of the insider's per-
spective is the concise "History of the Logical Positivist Movement" at
the head of A. J. Ayer's anthology Logical Positivism, which deals pri-
marily with the Vienna Circle. Here Ayer states immediately: "At the
beginning it was more of a club than a movement." Later, in speaking
of the international congresses in Prague, Kdnigsberg, Copenhagen,
Paris, and Cambridge, he refers to the ambition of the Vienna Circle to
I Thus even the Historisches Wbrterbuch der Philosophie edited by Joachim Ritter con-
tains only a (highly informative) study on "Bewegung, politische" by J. Frese. It fails to
mention philosophical movements.
The present essay, drafted first as the keynote address for the meeting of the South-
western Philosophical Society at North Texas State University in i980, owes its final
formulation mostly to the subsequent interest, research contributions, and suggestions
of Professor Karl Schuhmann, University of Utrecht. My colleague Albert William Levi
gave me additional critical stimuli.